AGRICULTURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 17 



door, if he will improve it, to cull and accept the successes, 

 and reject the failures. This costs the farmer of small means 

 nothing except the use of his eyes, his ears and his brain, all 

 of which were given him to use for his own profit. Had it 

 not been for the class of farmers that spend " their money for 

 that which is not bread," many a thrifty, money-getting farm- 

 er, who is now spending his money for that which is bread 

 to him, would be plodding along in the old beaten track, cul- 

 tivating the same fields, raising the same crops, and moving 

 in the same ruts as his grandfathers had done since the land- 

 ing of the Pilgrims on the ice-bound coast of the right arm 

 of the old Bay State. 



Again, many of our farmers have not sympathized with 

 those scientific men who have made great efibrts to raise 

 farming to a higher plane, and devoted their energies to the 

 promotion of the best interests of this primeval occupation of 

 man. They cannot seem to realize how such men who do 

 not follow this business for a livelihood can understand the 

 subject, how they can be so disinterested, and do not believe 

 that their teachings are worthy of candid investigation. 



These men have so little confidence in their calling, and are 

 so prone to watch for chances outside thereof, that, if placed 

 in the garden of Eden, instead of using "the river which went 

 out of Eden to w^ater the garden," for irrigating purposes, 

 they would divert its waters to run a saw-mill, or make it 

 grind in some prison-house of a manufactory. These men 

 say, they must have some sinister motive, some hobby to ride, 

 and their fallacious teachings will lead their followers away 

 from the good old beaten paths, as the ignis fatuus lures the 

 bewildered traveller into morass, over mountain, through for- 

 est, marsh and fen, away from his home and family. 



A change has taken place in agricidture within the last few 

 decades, and a very great one, too. This no one can deny. 

 And why ? What is the cause ? What has made the change ? 

 Undoubtedly it can be attributed to no one cause solely. But, 

 in my opinion, it is due, more than to any other one thing, to 

 the flood of light shed on the scier.ce of farming by those 

 very men, so poorly appreciated by thosa reaping the greatest 

 benefits from their scientific teachings. 



Soils have been analyzed, thus ascertaining what constitu- 

 3* 



